PCGA: Publishers have themselves to blame for piracy

PC Gaming Alliance boss says there will always be people who will pirate.

Publishers that don't protect their games from being stolen throughout all stages of production only have themselves to blame when they are pirated, the president of the PC Gaming Alliance has said.

Speaking to VideoGamer.com in an interview to be published next week, Randy Stude, president of the PCGA, a US-based non-profit organisation formed to defend PC gaming from accusations from some quarters that it is a dying industry, said that while "there will always be people who will pirate" publishers should do more to prevent "some guy" at the duplicator house from stealing code.

He said: "If your product is not protected all of the way through production, you're going to be faced with the scenario where some guy sitting at the duplicator house, this is where all the piracy starts, back doors the code to a buddy or flat out sells it to make money off a torrent rip of the game. That's where the problem is."

PC game piracy is currently one of the hottest issues in gaming. Recently Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux told VideoGamer.com that the PC gamer market was "in tatters". LucasArts explained to us in an interview from earlier in the year that it wasn't doing a PC version of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed because of the vast differences in power of PCs in people's homes and the lack of scalability of the game.

And only last week Ubisoft Shanghai creative director Michael de Plater has told VG247 that a PC version of EndWar would most likely be shipping alongside the console SKUs if it wasn't for rampant PC piracy, and that copyright theft is essentially destroying the PC games market.

Stude added: "Any publisher today who's making any game that's going out on any platform and isn't thinking about the potential of piracy with the widespread availability of broadband and the patience that people have to kick off a download that may take a day or more, then they're going to have challenges and they're going to act like it's a big surprise.

"It's like anything else in business. If you're not aware of the guy who's trying to steal your product then it's going to get stolen. You don't see the guards of banks walk around with money sacks on the street without proper precaution, right? Those days have been gone since the 1700s. If people are getting attacked in the streets and getting their money stolen from them you should probably not take your $20m-$50m investment in any game and leave it to chance."

While Stude admitted that the PCGA cannot currently offer a solution to this problem, and that "there will always be people who will pirate", he called on publishers to "be smart" about the way they deal with their own intellectual property and protect it "all the way through the production pipeline".

What's your view on PC game piracy? Do publishers only have themselves to blame? Let us know in the comments section below.

*g

There are two issues. The first is Piracy. Yes it's a problem but it's not limited to just the PC. Gears of War 2, Far Cry 2, Fable 2 and Fallout 3 - all available weeks before release for download. All on X360.
PC piracy is indeed a problem that needs to be tackled, but developers and publishers need to wake up and realise what they're doing to their honest customers.
DRM forces customers away. It doesn't prevent piracy. The pirates have already cracked and removed it. When it comes down to it, the honest customer gets the worst experience, the 'pirate' gets a game that installs without DRM spyware and limited installations.
The PC gaming market is not treating their paying customers with the respect deserved. As time goes on, less and less people are parting with their cash due to the way they are being treated. That doesn't mean they'll download the game, no matter what the industry rhetoric suggests.

JS

The reason why there is no Force Unleashed on PC is because it is an out and out console game. Having played it on the (obviously far less powerful) Nintendo DS, there's little chance this game wouldn't come in for massive criticism on the PC platform where gamers would be expecting an updated Jedi Knight/Academy style game instead.

As for piracy, the publisher should look to clean their own houses of leaks before trying to stop filesharers or annoy customers with intrusive and problematic DRM that (a) doesn't work, and (b) drives paying customers towards piracy.

dreamhunk

You know I am going to say at aleast EA did something or try to do something. Unlike alot of game devs and companies who nothing but talk! Drm is not perfect it has alot of problems! But other companies all they do is turn their backs on very fans that made them. You also have to ask why?

dreamhunk

Ok lets see here what has already been pirated on console before the game even came out.For xbox 360 GTA4,Saint Row2,Frycry2, falllout 3, fable 2. I find funny that the media is ready to blame pc gaming for pircay. It has always been there but for years game devs have ever done anything. Farcry 2 has been pirated and it's not talk about. But if it's on the pc everyone knows. I wonder is sony, nintendo and microsoft paying these game devs money.

there is pirates that brag that say you don't even need to mod your console to play games on console.

I guess these companies do care about their fans! they are ready to turn their backs on the very fans that made them. Lucas arts has turn their backs on their fans I hope the whole world knows about it!!!Yea will people on the xbox360 and ps3 get milked from hell and back from an old pc gaming machine.

By the way it's all moicro softs game devs that say garbage about pc gaming save lucas arts. Yea lets see how much lucas arts really cares about their fan base. Lets all lie to our fans!!! I wonder have they taken a good look in the force unleashed forum with pc gamer angery!!! it went over 3000 posts.

Lets talk about epic games a has been in the pc gaming realm. Yea epic games sucks!!! Epic games really love their fans they will sell out to the highest bidder. EPICS games has turn their backs on pc gamers the time UT3 only for the PS3!!! Pc gamers had to fight to get UT3 on pc! You want to know where multi plat came in it was because of epic games only selling 500 000 units on console. the rest 500 000 was made up by guess what pc gamers!!!!!You check out what the ceo of epic games said to pc gamers at the time. By the way Ut3 sucks!!!

yea you console gamers can go have the game devs sell outs. We Pc gamers have the real game devs like blizzard,anet,vavle,bio-ware,star dock etc that stick up for their fans and not abuse them.

I am glade that Intel bought Project offset! Not only that I glade intel is making their own games now. I so hope pc gamers will get a PC only state of art superman,batman,stargate,star tek or something! I would have said star wars in the past but lucas arts don't care about pc gamers. they would rather lie to us pc gamers.

I hope that pc gamers and game devs for pc can get open GL. I also hope that pc gamers can get affordable game engines soft ware to make and mod our own games.

I have message to all them console game devs your machine sucks. It's an old pc I find it funny that japan has problems now. Japan was never the best game devs. All the best game devs are found on the pc! Only the best game devs can even make it in the pc game market. the must popular game devs on console are all pc game devs!

I also have a solution to for pc games devs to stop piracy. It is to have all your games go online now. I would say something about how to protect console games but this point I am going to say who cares about console games and game devs!!!

yea i hope those game devs who have turn their backs on their fans get a real bad reputation. In pc gaming for a game dev to make it big it's all about your repuation.
Those game devs have their self to blame!!!

What's your view on PC game piracy? Do publishers only have themselves to blame?

I'm anti-piracy of any form, which stems from the fact that I was brought up to believe that stealing is wrong.

I'd argue that human nature is to blame. It doesn't matter how many steps a publisher takes to protect a product, there is absolutely nothing they can do to prevent a person involved in a game's production releasing code to the public.

Even if game developers changed their whole cultural ethos and became the equivalent of the Secret Service in terms of how they manage their data at every stage of handling, there would still be leaks, albeit they'd probably be more traceable.

So I'm in the same boat as Randy Stude, totally agree with his viewpoint in this area, and probably equally baffled as to a workable solution other than the industry getting more involved in the education system in order to brainwash future generations from pre-school onwards that piracy = theft = wrong.